Saturday, 29 September 2007

"The default position for all Spanish televisions is ON. Whether or not anybody actually watches the program broadcasted at the time is completely irrelevant."

(Guilty as charged. Well, you never know, there might be some vital piece of breaking news that I need to know about! In practice, this is highly unlikely.)

"The standard quality-level of Spanish television commercials is "super cheap and nasty".

Ain't that the truth? I'm not sure I quite agree with Les that comedy is almost never used to sell anything. No, rephrase that, there is, but it's unintentional comedy. But have they improved any since these ads from the 80s?

Watch for the blowup doll exiting the Renault Traffic and for Stevie Wonder, speaking Spanish. No, not dubbed and he obviously isn't fluent!

Thursday, 27 September 2007

"Miss the eyes and you've missed the shot. Getting the eyes in focus is key to capturing a photo of an animal. It's human nature to look at the eyes. It's how we determine emotion and how we connect."

With this little green-eyed monster called Betty, "wildlife" is the right term and, getting the eyes at all is a major accomplishment. They either don't show up, or are closed and getting her to keep still long enough usually (she's more at home climbing trees, fences, walls ...), but in a rare moment of composure, posing on top of her long-suffering "husband" Mico, out in our (scruffy) utility room, I finally managed to capture her looking straight at the camera.

Saturday, 22 September 2007

"It is plain there is not in nature a point of stability to be found; everything either ascends or declines; when wars are ended abroad, sedition begins at home; and when men are freed from fighting for necessity, they quarrel through ambition."

Thursday, 13 September 2007

The washing machine - 10 1/2 years old and long since "past it's prime" - decided to do a little dance around the utility room the other day, turning a full 90 degrees and even tried to take the drier for a spin as its partner for a bit of "domestic appliance rock and roll", complete with "light show."

Or I should say, "no light show", as these crazy antics knocked out the electricity in the whole house, which is probably just as well: you can't go letting appliances behave like delinquents, unchecked, can you?

The rusted front panel was left flapping in the breeze, the bottom of the machine parted company and the whole thing was leaning further off the vertical than that tower in Pisa. A faulty door catch meant it would work with the door open (as many a flood will attest) and it's been a long time since it seemed to get anything clean anyway, so I reckon it's time to say: R(ust).I.P.

Actually, for a dirt cheap (circa. £115) non-brand name washing machine to last for 10 years, with only one £20 repair, one can't really complain very much and, with it's parting shot at providing entertainment, not at all!

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"Chaos was experienced as a feeling of alienation from oneself, of being unable to determine one's own living conditions, and of being unable to handle stress situations by the same means as before. The path from chaos to cosmos was discovered by telling one's life story, which proved to be a creative process relating and integrating the present with the past, and providing an overview of one's life cycle."

I believe

"The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life . . . the children; those who are in the twilight of life . . . the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life . . . the sick, the needy, and the handicapped."